New Center Integrates Land Use and Water Policy

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy has launched the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy, a new think tank meant to integrate water and land-use planning. Based in Phoenix, the center's mission is to "advance water sustainability through improved land use planning, management and decision making."

The Babbitt Center will work at the local level with municipalities throughout the Colorado River Basin to "gather data, develop indicators, and build and test new tools for fair, efficient, and sustainable management of water resources," according to the announcement. For example:

An initial activity will be to develop a map, using satellite imagery, for selected tributaries of the Colorado River Basin. The aim is to provide a foundation – potentially scaled up to the entire basin, serving seven states and some 30 million people – that illustrates the relationship between land and water, and can be used for better projections, modeling, and scenario planning.

The Lincoln Institute is also adjusting its partnership with the Sonoran Institute—formerly known as Western Lands and Communities—to focus on local land-use planning and water management under the name Resilient Communities and Watersheds.

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